GeoPlace Sails Through ISO Audits

London, 11^th January 2013 – As part of its commitment to continually improving the quality and security of the data it works with, the GeoPlace management team is dedicated to maintaining the organisation’s internationally recognised ISO standards: ISO27001 Information Security and ISO9001 Quality Management Standard.

Both of these standards have been applied to the whole of GeoPlace’s business, specifically the ‘Provision to the public and private sectors of information management and consultancy services, relating to address location identification and street information’. 

In December 2012 GeoPlace successfully passed its latest ISO27001 Information Security audit, performed by external auditor Lloyds Register Quality Assurance. This was the fourth six-monthly external audit for this standard since achieving certification in October 2010, an unbroken period of over two years. 

In addition, GeoPlace has also maintained its ISO9001 Quality Management Standard for over four years since achieving certification at the beginning of January 2009, and full recertification in January 2012.  LRQA again failed to find any non-conformances or other issues in their sixth ISO9001visit.

Richard Mason, Managing Director said “During the last two years, GeoPlace has experienced major business changes from the transition of Intelligent Addressing to GeoPlace, the development of the National Address Gazetteer and the move to new offices.   This together with the ever increasing amount of data that GeoPlace handles is a record of which the company is understandably proud.  Our partners can be assured that we have the robust business systems in place necessary to successfully deliver complex data solutions.”

For more information, visit www.geoplace.co.uk.

The publication of AGI member press releases is a member service. The AGI neither approves or endorses the contents of member's press releases, nor makes any assurance of their factual accuracy.

Welsh Local Authorities in Money Saving Consortium

London, 16^th November 2012 – Eight local authorities encompassing the whole of North and mid-Wales have generated savings of over £850,000 by utilising Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) from Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs).

Focusing on the verification of single person discount claims, which entitles those living alone to a discount on the amount they are required to pay for their council tax, the authorities (Wrexham, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Conwy, Gwynedd, Anglesey, Ceredigion and Powys) commissioned a large project that saw all 135,000 claims checked.

UPRNs, which are the de facto property identifiers used across the public sector, were provided by five of the authorities in order to create linkages to other datasets including revenues and benefits records and the register of electors.  Additionally, the accuracy and standardisation of the address data contained in their LLPGs provided consistency for the geographical area, irrespective of council boundaries.

Because of the great deal of change which occurs with single person discounts due to people divorcing, students and other transient residents, calculation of actual numbers was difficult and very resource intensive.  Working together to gain better economies of scale, the authorities went through a formal tender process that saw an external organisation brought in to manage the process for sending out letters to residents, managing the queries that came back and also managing the matching of records with key external credit referencing data and the councils’ internal data sources to provide verification of the results.

Costing approximately £145,000 to run and returning savings, based on additional revenue, of £1 million, the average return across the eight authorities was £7 for every £1 spent.  Importantly, this was achieved without any extra pressure on existing staff and ultimately helped toward making the savings that all councils were required to achieve.

Speaking of the success, Phil Round, Revenues and Benefits Manager at Wrexham County Borough Council explained that, “Working within a consortium has had major benefits.  In addition to securing economies of scale, members were able to provide mutual support to each other, and create one tender document and one contract for all eight authorities.”

“The whole project was underpinned by the UPRNs, which made the linking of all datasets much easier and quicker, and facilitated the ability to work together.”

LLPGs are address datasets created by each local authority in England and Wales.  They conform to British Standard BS7666 and contain every property within a council’s boundaries.  Each record is assigned a UPRN and there are a growing number of examples of significant savings being created by councils utilising this data to reduce errors, avoid duplication of work and enable joint working.

For more information, visit www.geoplace.co.uk

GeoPlace contact:

Gayle Gander

Head of Marketing

+44(0)20 7630 4600

gayle.gander@geoplace.co.uk

www.geoplace.co.uk

The publication of AGI member press releases is a member service. The AGI neither approves or endorses the contents of member's press releases, nor makes any assurance of their factual accuracy.

GeoPlace Opens Up Streetworks Information

13 December 2012 - GeoPlace has launched a new service, designed to assist the Department for Transport (DfT) to fulfil a requirement to make streetworks information more accessible for the general public and other interested parties.

The new Streetworks Signposting Service is available through the NSG website, www.thensg.org.uk.  It enables users to search for streetworks via a map or free text search function and then directly link to the relevant highway authority streetworks register. 

Under the New Roads and Streetworks Act 1991, English local authorities are required to make their streetworks register available to the general public.

However, for people wanting to access streetworks information across the country from a number of different highway authorities, visiting numerous websites is a time consuming and unwieldy exercise.  The new GeoPlace service provides a portal to access this information from one place.

Government is committed to making it easier to access public data, easier for data publishers to release data in standardised, open formats; and engraining a ‘presumption to publish’ unless specific reasons, such as privacy or national security, can be clearly articulated.

In line with this desire to enable the potential of Open Data, the Streetworks Signposting Service was created in response to the Department for Transport’s Open Data Strategy.  This stated that the DfT will work with others to deliver a range of highways and traffic data, including streetworks, to help reduce congestion and enable businesses to make more predictable travel and logistics decisions. 

Local Transport Minister Norman Baker said: “Streetworks are necessary but understandably can be incredibly frustrating for motorists.

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London Borough of Harrow Wins the Overall Exemplar Award 2012

London, 8^th November 2012 – London Borough of Harrow has been announced the winner of the Overall Exemplar Award 2012 at the annual GeoPlace ‘Everything Happens Somewhere’ Conference.

The Award, which was presented at the Central London ceremony on 25^th October 2012, is considered the most prestigious of all the Awards as it was voted for by the 320 delegates in attendance.

Asked to select the overall winner from those councils who had won individual awards on the day, the delegates considered the outcomes of the work done, the use of gazetteers, relevance to improving public service and the overall ‘wow’ factor of each winning entry.

Impressed by Harrow’s innovative approach to gazetteer integration that saw them create an intranet based LLPG (Local Land and Property Gazetteer) portal with multiple LLPG based web services at its core, the delegate vote saw them emerge victorious.

Developed in only three weeks at a cost of little more than £2,100, the new system facilitated the removal of a third party system, which will see them recognise savings in excess of £15,000 over a five year period.

In addition to these direct, cashable savings, Harrow designed the new system to increase the visibility and use of the LLPG, improving both information exchange and workflow.  Not only can other council departments now seamlessly access the data, and through that remove possible errors and the duplication of work, but these other departments are now able to feedback their own information to the central LLPG hub.

This ‘cross reference candidate process’ allows teams across the council to assign their own systems’ cross references to LLPG properties, which are then flagged to the LLPG Custodian.  Once validated and approved, these cross references can be imported into the council’s gazetteer management system with the click of a button, all done in compliance with nationally recognised standards.

Speaking of the Award, LLPG Custodian at London Borough of Harrow, Luke Studden, said, “We embarked on this project because we firmly believe that the LLPG becomes a valuable asset when it is utilised, yet becomes an invaluable one when it is integrated and when those integrations are leveraged.”

“Credit for this Award has to go to the whole of the Web and GIS teams as it has been their hard work and dedication that has seen this project become such a success.  It is because of their efforts that this council will continue to make significant savings long into the future.”

For more information, visit www.geoplace.co.uk

About GeoPlace

GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey.  GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer for England and Wales, providing definitive sources of publicly-owned spatial address and street data for Great Britain.  Through agreement with Scotland’s Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland’.

Contacts:

GeoPlace contact:

Gayle Gander

Head of Marketing

+44(0) 20 7630 4600

gayle.gander@geoplace.co.uk

www.geoplace.co.uk

The publication of AGI member press releases is a member service. The AGI neither approves or endorses the contents of member's press releases, nor makes any assurance of their factual accuracy.

Winners of the 2012 GeoPlace Exemplar Awards are Announced

London, 25th October 2012 - GeoPlace, the centre of excellence for the management of spatial address information and street data for Great Britain, has today announced the winners of the 2012 Exemplar Awards.

The Awards celebrated excellence in service delivery that had been enabled through local government address and street information.  They recognised the vital role address and street information professionals play in local service delivery, celebrating their achievements and providing external acknowledgement of innovation, creativity, best practice, hard work and achievement.

The Award Ceremony took place as part of the 'Everything Happens Somewhere' conference, which was held on 25^th October 2012 in Central London.  Both the Exemplar Awards and the conference itself were aimed at supporting local government address and street information specialists, together with street naming and numbering officials. 

The main category winners of the 2012 Exemplar Awards are:

Citizen Award: Caerphilly County Borough Council.  On behalf of the Aber Valley Heritage Group and the wider community, Caerphilly County Borough Council mapped the addresses of all 440 victims of the 1913 Senghenydd Collier Explosion to help in telling the story of the UK’s worst ever mining disaster.

Improvement and Efficiency Award: Kent County Council.  With the aim of improving public safety, whilst at the same time reducing costs, Kent County Council developed a system to lessen the occurrence of potholes and footway defects, and find and swiftly fix those which do occur with fewer Road Safety Inspectors and lower compensation claims.

Integration Award: London Borough of Harrow.  Focusing on the delivery of ‘more for less’, the London Borough of Harrow created an in-house solution providing a platform for all staff to access address information corporately  at a fraction of what they had previously paid to a private company.

Services Award: Bath and North East Somerset Council.  After commissioning 360-degree street level photography for integration into its web based GIS, Bath and North East Somerset Council dynamically linked the data to their local address dataset in order to make that data fully searchable and maximise the return on investment, leading to savings right across the council.

Best Example of Street Naming and Numbering Policy Implementation Award: Adur and Worthing Councils.  In order to streamline services, reduce lengthy paperwork processes and create additional revenue, Adur and Worthing Councils amalgamated the Street Naming and Numbering Services employed across the two councils via a shared service.

GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey.  GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer for England and Wales, providing definitive sources of publicly-owned spatial address and street data for Great Britain.  Through agreement with Scotland’s Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland’. 

For more information, visit www.geoplace.co.uk.

Contacts:

GeoPlace contact:

Gayle Gander

Head of Marketing

+44(0) 20 7630 4600

gayle.gander@geoplace.co.uk

www.geoplace.co.uk

The publication of AGI member press releases is a member service. The AGI neither approves or endorses the contents of member's press releases, nor makes any assurance of their factual accuracy.